The Universe is a Very Big Place (30 page)

"Hey, Beautiful. You awake?"
 

Spring blinked slowly and paused to feel her heart beat. It was so loud she could hear it in her ears. She turned slowly towards the voice, her face red, her eyes apologetic. He was lying next to her on the bed, his face inches from her own.

"Hi," she said, smiling weakly. For a moment she remembered what she must look like, her hair wild and uncombed, her mascara smeared across her cheeks, her eyes red and swollen from crying, and panic took over. But when he smiled back she knew she was okay.

"It's late. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to wake you, but I thought I should."

Spring shot up.
It’s late?
She was sure she had slept no more than an hour. As she looked at the clock on the bedside table, she knew that she was in trouble. It was after eleven and she had not been home.

"I gotta go. Sam is probably worried sick. And Lanie, too. Oh, God." Spring jerked herself out of the bed, letting the blankets fall to the floor. "Where’s my shoes? I lost my shoes."

John pointed to her shoes by the bedroom door, neatly arranged by an invisible hand.

"Thank you," she said, slipping into them. "You’ve been a great friend to me. I really needed this."

"You going to be alright? I can drive you home."

"No. I’m okay. I need to make up a story. Sarah’s last day at work party. That will work."

Spring felt John study her as she straightened out her clothes. “You could tell him the truth. It was innocent."

"Tell Sam the truth?" Spring almost choked on this. "Obviously, you don’t know Sam." Spring patted down her hair, grabbed her purse, and was about to leave the room when she noticed something. A framed picture by the bed. It wasn’t a photograph. It was a drawing done in charcoals. A drawing of her.

She walked towards it, not quite believing what she was seeing. When she got to it, she picked it up. Sure enough, it was her face. But more beautiful. "You do this?" She turned to see John. He had his hands shoved into his pockets and he was looking at the floor. He nodded but wouldn’t meet her gaze.

"John." She put the picture down and walked around the bed to him. "John, that’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen." She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled herself into him, as tightly as she could. She could hear his heartbeat.

"I worked on it while you were sleeping. You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen," he said simply, looking down at her. "It’s all you, Spring. Not me."

Spring wasn’t quite sure how it happened but without warning their lips met. His were warm, and firm, and strong. "Oh, God," she moaned as he pulled her close. "You’re a good kisser. God, you feel good."

"So do you," he said back, between the urgent meetings of their mouths.
 

His passion surprised her. She felt a need she hadn’t known she possessed wash over her. It was stronger than she had ever felt for Jason, or even Trevor. The desire to meld with this man. The more she kissed him, the closer she needed to be to him. It was never close enough.

"I want you," John whispered, his hands finding their way under the back of her shirt. She felt him tug on the hooks of her bra. Her body warmed, responding. One of his hands found her breast and she moaned again, louder. A primal moan that startled her. And it broke the spell.

Spring stepped back, out of his arms. "No. No, John. God. What just happened? I shouldn’t be here. I have to go." She grabbed her things and ran out of the building. Sam was right. She was acting like a Jezebel. How could she explain this to him? John stared after her, looking confused, but he didn’t try and stop her as she made her way to the door.

As Spring drove home, she knew that she would be in more trouble than she could handle. Sam would be up, waiting for her, and might possibly give her another round on the lie detector. But this time she had done something. She had kissed John Smith. Worse, she had liked it. She was an engaged woman and she was running around town like a common harlot.

It was my last fling
, she told herself, as her neighborhood came into view.
Before I marry Sam.
Those four words came back at her like a punch in the stomach.
 

Before I marry Sam.

Sam was indeed waiting for her. He sat on the rocking chair on the front porch, rocking like a man who had been keeping accurate time of how long his fiancée had been missing. She could see the whites of his eyes against the darkness of the night and she shuddered. She braced herself for what would come next, but as she made her way towards Sam, she realized that he was not going to confront her. He sat quietly looking at her, like a wounded child, and a wave of compassion fell over her.

"I’m sorry I was gone," she said, sitting down on a concrete step. She leaned over to pluck a blade of dry grass from the lawn and bit on the tip, crunching it between her teeth. "The marriage thing. And work. I needed a break from life. I should have called you."

Sam sighed letting his shoulders sag deeply into his back.
 

Spring noticed a gold shopping back sitting primly on his lap. "What’s that?" she asked.

"I got you a little something." He handed her the bag, which was surprisingly light. Spring reached in and pulled out the gift. It was silky soft and smelled good, like lavender. She held it out to study it under the porch light. A burgundy-colored nightgown, about four sizes too large for her.

"The salesgirl helped me pick it out," he said. "I told her that my fiancée was about the same build as she was, and she thought this would be perfect."
 

Spring imagined the salesgirl was the size of a small duplex.
 

"Go in the house and try it on sweetie. I bet you will look beautiful in it."

Spring bit her tongue to avoid saying anything hurtful about her gift. This was her penance for her shenanigans. She took off her shirt and pulled the nightgown over her head as Sam’s jaw dropped in protest. As he frantically checked to make sure none of the neighbors were watching, Spring checked her reflection in the windowpane. She was reminded of old cowboy cartoons where the bad guys walked around in barrels to conceal their nudity.

"Oh, Pookie. You look beautiful," Sam beamed. "You can wear that on our honeymoon. It’s perfect."

Spring smiled, offered him a peck on the cheek, and went inside.

In the next room, Lanie couldn’t sleep. She rummaged through her vials, bags, and drawers looking for some of Jason‘s magic sleeping herbs. Despite what Spring had said, Lanie had no objections to natural remedies. If it came from Mother Earth it had to be okay.

She puckered her lips thoughtfully when she realized she was out. She'd finished the last of it off during her last lovemaking session with Bob. The thought of the two of them snuggled up together made her smile and she entertained the idea of walking to his house for a midnight session.
 

"No," she said to herself. "The poor boy needs his rest." She grinned wickedly as she thought about how he had begged her to take it easy on him.

Lanie slipped quietly down the hall and rummaged through the medicine cabinet. "Hmmm," she said, turning the bottle of the twin’s Ritadate over in her hands. "...May cause drowsiness."
 

Lanie took a few, followed by a swallow of water from the sink, and headed back to her room. Once inside, with the door safely locked, she went to her closet and groped around on the top shelf with her hands until she found the shoebox, hidden quietly behind the collection of Frank Sinatra and Burl Ives albums that she'd never found the heart to part with. She had lost so much in her life. She couldn’t lose Frank and Burl, too.

She hadn’t opened the shoebox in years, and sifting through it for the first time in over a decade made her feel like she was reaching into another dimension––another life she scarcely had memory of anymore. One hundred and fifty-six letters from her ex-husband sent from his twenty years in prison. No one knew about the letters. Not even her daughters. Why she had kept them, she never knew. Maybe she liked the idea that someone out there loved her, even if that someone was a sorry son of a bitch who walked out on wives and children.

Lanie puffed on her cigarette and held the smoke inside her lungs as she read the one on top of the pile.

My Dearest Elaine,

I think about you every night and day. I will never be able to tell you how sorry I am for leaving you and the girls. It is the biggest regret of my life. But I will come back to you when I am worthy. I promise.

Ernest

"Mother fucker,” she said during an exhale and crumpled the letter, tossing it back into the box with perfect precision. "Bastard liar." She kicked the shoebox, sending it sprawling across the room, dumping its contents in a path across the floor. She remembered a story told to her by an old Indian woman who ran the corn dog machine. The Trail of Tears. Lanie couldn’t recall what the trail referred to, but as she looked at her line of letters, she understood...something.
 

Lanie had waited for him. For days. For weeks. For months. For years. Each letter promised his return, but he never made it. She had been holding onto a box of empty promises.

There was a hollowness in her chest and it was associated with an emotion she couldn’t identify. She snapped her fingers, trying to name the feeling.
Loneliness?
No. She was not lonely.
Loss?
Getting closer.
Regret?
 

Yes, that’s right. She was feeling regret.
 

Lanie had never had a moment’s regret for anything she had ever done, but she was feeling it now. Regret for the lost time she had spent mourning a man who couldn’t make it back to her and who hadn’t loved her enough to stay with her in the first place. She crawled alongside the letter trail until she straddled the empty shoebox. She peered inside and saw Ernie’s face. Or what she thought it looked like. She could hardly remember any more. Time had taken his eyes, his smile, his hair. Time had taken the crinkles she thought she remembered forming around his eyes. Time had distorted him into a menagerie of images, some real, some made up. She was a crypto-zoologist, chasing Bigfoot. What was she holding onto again?